THE THREE RAVENS

The object of the present work is to discuss and analyze the ballad “The Wife of Usher’s Well” by an anonymous. Ballads were short narrative poems, mostly anonymous and handed down orally. Moreover, they were usually sung and accompanied by music. There were mostly about tragic love stories, the supernatural or the battles on the border between England and Scotland.

Considering the title, the reader expects the ballad to be about a supernatural story or a tragic love story of birds, in particular of three ravens. Moreover, there is also an alliteration of sound “th”. Thus, the reader focuses the attention on the number “three”.

Looking at the layout, the ballad is arranged into ten stanzas of two lines. Thus, the ballad presents a regular pattern. Furthermore, there are couplet rhymes.

The ballad tells the simple story of three ravens discussing what to handle and where to go for it. As was usual for ballads, it is written either in the form of a dialogue between the protagonists of the story and in narration form. At the first beginning the speaking voice connotes the three birds with the adjective “black” and he or she underline the colour black with the anaphora of the verb “were”. One of the ravens proposes to go and eat in a field, also characterized by an adjective that concerns its color which is "green".

Afterwards, one of the ravens begins to tell the story of a knight dead the camp. In particular, here the narrator uses a metaphor to refer about the camp’s underground.

He also says that despite his death, his hawks and dogs still hover over his body. Indeed, no animal dares to approach. In the seventh line there is also an alliteration of sound “h” to convey the idea of belonging of the animals to the knight.

Later someone arrives and lifts the corpse and buries it. Thus, the ravens are left without food. Furthermore, in lines 16 and 17 there is the repetition of the personal pronoun “him”, creating anaphoric structure. The narrator makes the choice because he wants to underline the attachment of this person to the knight.

The ballad ends with an explicit reference to God who sends good men and faithful animals.